Do arousal and valence have separable influences on attention across time?

Previous research has shown that emotions differentially influence attention across time, especially when the valence of the attended stimuli is congruent with the emotion of observer. Sadness produces a larger attentional blink while fear and happiness produce smaller attentional blinks. We report on four dual-task rapid serial visual presentation experiments in which participant emotion and the affective features of the first target (T1) were systematically varied to determine whether arousal and valence have unique and consistent influences on attention performance.

Boredom proneness and emotion regulation predict emotional eating.

Emotional eating is considered a risk factor for eating disorders and an important contributor to obesity and its associated health problems. It has been suggested that boredom may be an important contributor to overeating, but has received relatively little attention. A sample of 552 college students was surveyed.

Mood-specific effects in the allocation of attention across time.

Participants completed single and dual rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) tasks. Across five experiments, either the mood of the participant or valence of the target was manipulated to create pairings in which the critical target was either mood congruent or mood noncongruent. When the second target (T2) in an RSVP stream was congruent with the participant's mood, performance was enhanced.

The emotional blink: adult age differences in visual attention to emotional information.

To assess age differences in attention-emotion interactions, the authors asked young adults (ages 18-33 years) and older adults (ages 60-80 years) to identify target words in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task. The second of two target words was neutral or emotional in content (positive in Experiment 1, negative in Experiment 2). In general, the ability to identify targets from a word stream declined with age.

Self-efficacy and choice of coping strategies for tolerating acute pain.

Participants who reported either low or high self-efficacy for tolerating painful stimuli were randomly assigned to conditions, in which they either did or did not have a choice of strategies for coping with arm shock. Choice and self-efficacy were positively associated with increases in perceived control. Being given a choice, in comparison to having no choice, led to increased tolerance of arm shock and lower pain reports for those with high self-efficacy.

Cognitive therapy for depression: a comparison of individual psychotherapy and bibliotherapy for depressed older adults.

Thirty-one community-residing older adults age 60 or over either received 16 sessions of individual cognitive psychotherapy (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979) or read Feeling Good (Bums, 1980) for bibliotherapy. Posttreatment comparisons with the delayed-treatment control indicated that both treatments were superior to a delayed-treatment control. Individual psychotherapy was superior to bibliotherapy at posttreatment on self-reported depression, but there were no differences on clinician-rated depression.

Dual-task attention deficits in dysphoric mood.

The attentional functioning of nondysphoric, mildly dysphoric, and moderately to severely dysphoric college students was tested using the attentional blink (AB) paradigm. These groups performed equally well at reporting a single target appearing in a rapidly presented stream of stimuli. All groups showed an AB, with report sensitivity for a 2nd target being reduced when the 2 targets were presented less than 0.

Can anxiety help us tolerate pain?

It was hypothesized that anxiety which is relevant to the source of pain exacerbates pain, whereas anxiety which is irrelevant to the source of pain reduces the experience of pain. Female subjects were given either high or low anxiety provoking information about a cold pressor task (relevant anxiety) or high or low anxiety provoking information about a potential shock (irrelevant anxiety). Subjects were then exposed to the cold pressor.

Interview vs. paper-and-pencil administration of the McGill Pain Questionnaire.

In a 2 x 2 design, college student subjects described one of two levels of cold pressor pain (threshold or tolerance) with the McGill Pain Questionnaire administered via one of two modes (interview or paper-and-pencil). Interview administration was associated with higher scores on 5 of the 6 MPQ scores calculated. Data did not support the notion that this effect is entirely attributable to increased probability of interviewed subjects' endorsement of descriptors for which clarification of meaning was sought.